Meet the leaders: Kathryn McMullan

Kathryn McMullan is the director of the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO). She’s also one of the most respected leaders in the defence and intelligence sectors. Here she shares how a glass of champagne and hike across Mount Kosciuszko help set the tone for her New Year. 

What is the best piece of feedback you’ve received?
I don’t have a specific piece of feedback that comes to mind. I find it is more about hearing the right thing from the right person, at the right time, rather than a lightbulb moment of insight.

But my current mantra is ‘do what you love, be curious about the world, show empathy and kindness to the people around you’, and that seems to be working well for me.

What advice would you give to anyone juggling work and other life commitments?
Be clear in your mind about what is most important to you, then set expectations of how you will meet that. And the critical part to success – hold yourself to account and keep to it!

What keeps you awake at night?
My organisation sits across multiple time zones across the globe, so sometimes I am doing late night or early morning calls with my people. Other times I am getting the call in the night which usually means something has gone wrong somewhere in the world …

If I find that I’m not sleeping great it is often that I am ruminating about something, or trying to forward plan and get ahead of what I foresee as an emerging issue. My solution is generally to get up, write down what I am thinking, then I can ‘put it to bed’ for the night. 

Who do you most admire?
My nanna, Annie, is absolutely a woman that inspired me. She was a feminist by nature and action (if not always comfortable with the label), and her story of resilience, ambition, and drive balanced with her generosity of spirit and empathy for others always impressed me.

Growing up poor, surviving domestic violence before it was accepted, divorce before no-fault laws passed, thriving through WW2, migration to Australia… her story was both commonplace for a woman of her generation, and also completely remarkable.

How are you using AI in your life?
Inside AGO we are looking to understand, learn and leverage artificial intelligence to make our organisation as efficient and agile as possible.

Personally, I haven’t spent much time playing with different AI tools, but I see them influencing the behaviours and actions of the people around me. How it is being used in the classroom; how it is used to personalise marketing to me; how people use it in the workplace for drafting papers – these are all accepted practices.

What if anything would you like to see change for women in the workplace?
True normalisation of women in senior positions, and an absence of terms that imply a female version of leadership versus a male version of leadership. 

Do you make new year’s resolutions and if so what it?
Not really. But I do like to do something on New Year’s Day that sets the tone for the year.

This year I walked Mt Kosciusko with my closest friends and our kids and it was a nod to the fact that I wanted to have more adventures in the outdoors with the kids, and spend more time with my friends. And the glass of champagne at the end also set the tone for this year!

If you were elected Prime Minister what is the one thing you would change?
[If] I could bring a theme or focus to my day as PM it would be around levers to remove gender based violence. Working in intelligence, where my clear mission is to protect Australians, I find it both tragic and mystifying when I see the statistics of women impacted by violence every day.